More than 23 million people use the railways every day in India.
Google Inc. has begun offering free Wi-Fi to Mumbai train passengers in the hopes of boosting its role in the huge Indian market.
Giggling groups of students, bored commuters and snack-shop vendors were all logging on Friday at Mumbai Central Train Station, the first of 400 stations the company plans to eventually reach with the service.
"If my train is leaving, and I need to search, don't know where to go, then immediately I will get the answer," student Divya Patel said excitedly while waiting for a train to her hometown of Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
Free Wi-Fi is rare across India. Most of the country's 300 million Internet users pay for personal access and often rely on slow-loading smartphone connectivity.
With a massive 1.25 billion population in India, including six million new Internet users every month, Silicon Valley tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft have set sights on expanding in the Indian market.
With more than 23 million people using the railways every day, Google said free Internet in train stations will give high-speed access that many can't afford.
"Most of India is still not online," Google CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters last month in New Delhi. "We want to bring access to as many people as possible," he said.
For the project, Google teamed up with Indian Railways as well as communications infrastructure provider RailTel.